


Puppy Love

by jollux



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dogs, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, domestic as hell, this is lame and kinda sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 01:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14344773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jollux/pseuds/jollux
Summary: Adam's home on summer vacation and Ronan finds a stray on the property.





	Puppy Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely self fulfilling because I'm selfish as fuck let me live.
> 
> Also I haven't read the new short story yet so if things are wrong don't come at me.

By the time Adam woke up, the sun had been pouring into the bedroom window for hours, keeping the air thick and warm. It wasn’t until recently where sleeping in became a luxury he could finally partake in, and honestly, he was enjoying it. Even now, he didn’t have the most time to often, but he’s been on summer break for four days, so what the hell.

He reached over beside him and his arm limply hit an empty mattress. No Ronan, or Opal for that matter, recently she’d been coming into their room at night and climb into bed with them for a reason unbenounced to Adam; but he didn’t mind, he thought it was sweet and enjoys her company. The house was quiet, Ronan was most likely out with the cows or fixing the broken door on the barn, or the broken wall beside it that started caving in after a bad storm last week, something always seemed to be broken on that barn; and Opal was probably having the time of her life with the scrap metal pile out back. Responsibility and adulthood soon sunk in and Adam remembered everything he had to get done today, listing it all up and down in his head. Step one was breakfast, easy enough.

The creeks from the old stairway echoed loudly through the foyer, cracking like a wood burning fire. In the kitchen, the coffee was still moderately warm, and better than the other option of making a whole new pot. Pouring himself a cup, he scrolls through messages on his phone: Gansey, Blue, and Henry made it to Seattle last night and Adam had to see the Space Needle from every angle they could think of.

Being the meticulous planner he is, Adam decided to go over his course material for this past year once more (as if he hadn’t already done that enough times that he could probably recite the entire textbook verbatim), before he broke in his textbooks for the fall.

Still a little over tired from school, he fell asleep again on the couch, hugging his textbook to his chest, his empty coffee mug falling onto the living room rug.

 

He woke up a short while later to the sound of the front door, excited by the likelihood of it being Ronan. “Hey,” he calls in that general direction.

“Hey!” Ronan responds quickly. “I--uh--I didn’t know you were up yet.”

“Yeah, well, it’s like 11:00.” Adam pulls himself out of the couch, dragging his fast asleep right leg along with the rest of him out to the foyer.

“Oh, ri--”

“What the fuck is that?” Adam interrupts, noticing the small dog sitting on the tile floor, wagging its tail.

“I found him, or at least I think it’s a him, down near the main road.”

“You stole someone’s dog?”

“I didn’t steal anyone’s fucking dog, I found him,” Ronan responds cooly.

“You don’t just find a dog, he’s someone’s, they’re probably looking for him!” Adam raises his voice, not to a yell but to a clearer speaking voice. The little mutt looks up at him and cocks his head, his tail wagging faster and nearly into the next dimension.

“There isn’t a house for at least eight miles in any direction, he doesn’t have any tags either.” Ronan leans down to gesture to his naked neck, as well as pet the top of his head.

“So what are you going to do with him?” Adam asks, sympathetic to his scruffy little face.

“Keep him.”

“You can’t keep him,” Adam says softly, kneeling down to meet with him on the floor. The dog’s face lights up, putting his paws on Adam’s leg.

“I wasn’t going to keep him, I thought maybe we could, ya know, together.” Ronan voice falters, shoving all the words out at a nervous pace.

Adam’s stomach does a small backflip. His eyes flit up to Ronan, who remains locked on the puppy while his face turns a light shade of red.

God, Adam loves dogs. This one especially, he might as well be the nicest, cutest dog he’d ever met.

“But what if Opal--” Adam covers the dog’s ears with his hands. “--E-A-T-S him, or something. She’s only been around the sheeps and cows, they’re so much bigger than her but this little guy isn’t.”

“I doubt it, she’s only ever killed one squirrel, and she didn’t even try to eat it. He’d be happy here, he has so much space to run around.”  
Adam sighs, giving in. “Fine,” he smiles.

“We’re going to be such good dads to you, huh, little guy?” Ronan grins at the puppy, rubbing his belly while he rolls around on the floor.

Dads.

“You’re the best.” Ronan gets up and kisses Adam on the forehead.

_Dads._

* * *

 

They walk through the aisles of the PetSmart in town, thinking of everything they’d need for a stray dog they decided to keep.

“How much do you think he weighs?” Adam asks, partially to Ronan, partially to himself; reading the labels on dog food packages.

“I don’t know, like, 45 lbs.?” Ronan guesses, wrapping his arms around Adam's waist and resting his head on his shoulder.

Adam nods, waiting another moment to grab it off the shelf, wanting to stay just a little longer together in aisle 7 with Ronan’s arm’s around him.

The pile in the cart looks like enough after about an hour. They have everything except a dog tag, agreeing to come back for that. After they pick a name. And maybe confirm what sex he is.

 

At the Barns, Opal is still behind the house with the scrap metal. Adam walks out to check on her, holding the bought toy they bought her out in front of him. He calls her name and sees a blonde head of hair pop up behind an old tractor tire, then tiny hands pushing the mess of hair back (Adam and Ronan have been trying all week to brush her hair without really getting anywhere, so far they’d gotten her to bathe though, and that in itself feels like a win). She smiles at him in greeting, a broken bike chain hanging from her mouth.

“How’s it going out here?” He passes her the rubber dog toy, it’s made for a dog around 200 lbs and Adam and Ronan agreed that that should hold her off at least until they get a chance to go back to PetSmart. Maybe it could even keep her out of the scrap metal for a few days.

She gasps a little, her teeth losing grip on the bike chain. She runs up and wraps her arms around Adam in a tight hug that fills his heart with love, not at all caring about the chain grease now on his jacket.

Opal sinks her teeth into the dog toy as Adam opens the sliding glass door.

 

“Well,” Adam sits down beside Ronan on the floor, leaning onto the chair, and putting his head on Ronan’s shoulder. “She loves it.”

“What can I say? We know her well,” Ronan laughs. He’s sitting cross legged on the living room floor with his laptop and the dog laying down on his other side. On the screen is about eight tabs of articles and YouTube videos on how to introduce a new dog to various pets and . “I can’t figure out how to introduce ‘em.”

“I don’t know, however you introduce a dog to a kid probably,” Adam runs his fingers mindlessly down Ronan’s leg.

“Yeah, I thought so, too,” he sighs. “Turns out YouTube doesn't have very many videos about our goat-child-daughter. So, I don’t know, maybe just how you introduce a new dog to a young child and just be extra careful.”

Adam hums in agreeance. The way Ronan casually referred to Opal as _their_ child made his breath catch. Even though she is mostly her own person and no one was really yet sure what she is, and any effort to "parent" her has yet to work; he loves her so fucking much.

“I mean,” Ronan continues. “It’s kinda more or less the same for everything, I just really want this to go well.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh!” Ronan perks up. “I also looked up how to check, and it’s a girl.”

“So what should we name her?” Adam grabs onto Ronan’s left hand and pulls it from the keyboard into his lap.

“Not sure yet.” Using his free hand, he looks up lists of dog names, reading them out. “Comet? Rosie? Boots? Olive? Lady? Peony? Nala? Mint? Gemini? Tabitha? Indigo? Mia? Neptu--”

“That one. Indigo, I like Indigo.”

Ronan squeezes his hand, grinning. “I like Indigo, too.” Ronan rubs her head and she lets out an excited yap. “She seems like an Indigo.”

 

After watching at least 12 videos of how to introduce a new dog to a baby, a toddler, and an older child, as well as another nine on how to introduce a new dog to an older one, they feel about as ready as they’ll ever be.

Adam clips a leash onto Indigo, giving Ronan time to call Opal in from the backyard. He walks in, holding her by the hand, reminding her over and over again to be gentle with the new family member. All four hours they’d had her, Indigo seemed like a pretty mellow dog and nothing’s really changed. A lot of websites said to hold the puppy back a little, letting it just sniff the other dog (or, Opal, in this case) at first. Indigo barely tugs the leash, she just saunters up to her slowly.

Maybe Opal should have been the ‘new dog’, she seemed a little more energetic, excitedly whispering “Canis!” Ronan grips her shoulders tightly, obviously happy with how it’s going. After she calms down slightly, he lets her go and Adam unclips the leash, letting them play around together on the floor.

“This is going better than I thought, honestly,” Ronan laughs a little, slinking an arm around Adam’s shoulder, who leans his head on his chest.

“Except we now have fight both of them get them to take a bath.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

The rest of the evening goes better than either of them hoped. Opal was getting along better with Indigo than she’d gotten along with Adam or Ronan in the beginning.

After dinner they even decided to pull out the VHS player and some old Disney tapes, with absolutely nothing postdating 2000. They all squish together onto the loveseat in the basement, Opal sitting in between Adam and Ronan with Indigo contently asleep on her lap.

* * *

 

Adam sets down Indigo’s bed on the floor of his and Ronan’s bedroom with little hope that she’ll actually sleep there, she seems too attached to Opal to leave her for the night.

To much of everyone’s surprise, she does sleep there, causing Adam and Ronan to get ready for bed extra quietly, careful not to wake her.

For the first time in a while, everyone’s in bed before midnight. Is this what the good timeline is like?

Around 1:00 AM, Indigo wakes up and jumps on the bed, waking both Adam and Ronan. She circles a little stepping on everyone and crushing everything until she settles down on Adam’s chest. They laugh at how sweet she is, extremely careful not to wake her. Ronan turns onto his stomach and lazily drapes his arm on Adam and Indigo.

* * *

 

At 2:00AM, the door to their room creeks open, letting in Opal in her favourite monster truck pyjamas. She climbs onto the bed, pushing herself in between Adam and Ronan, waking them up again. Adam hopes that she feels like the safest person in the world right now.

Ronan turns to Adam after Opal’s fast asleep. “We’ll be great dads.”

Adam stares at the ceiling and smiles into the dark.

_Dads._

 

The next morning Adam wakes up early for work. Careful to shut off his alarm before waking anyone else. Opal sits up, cocking her head at him as he pulls on a hoodie. “I gotta work today,” he says.

She frowns.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time for dinner.” He smiles sweetly at her, tousling her hair, and sneaking out the door as she lies back down again to sleep.

_We’ll be great dads._

Maybe they won’t have to wait for that, Adam thinks, it feels like they already kinda are.


End file.
